Knight News Challenge: Pioneering the practice of public autonomy

[Michael Allan]

Hi Mark,

I think you're right, the meaning of public autonomy needed
clarifying. Here's my latest attempt:

   We're unfree if we live under laws and other norms that we cannot
   reasonably agree with. To be free in a social world that regulates
   itself by norms (to have public autonomy), we must correct those
   norms that offend us on this principle. As the social theorist and
   philosopher Habermas puts it, "Just those action norms are valid to
   which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in
   rational discourses." ...

You're also right that I failed to answer the challenge directly.
Here's my correction for that:

   ... Taking this discourse principle as our guiding star, we aim to
   pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on the continual
   exposure of draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses.
   We'll simultaneously run electoral primaries based on open,
   transitive voting to put our most qualified practitioners on the
   ballot and into office. There they'll continue to work with us,
   their un-elected peers. Together we'll use this improved mechanism
   of interaction between citizens and government to ratchet up the
   legitimacy of statutes and other regulatory norms. ...

And this whopper of a one-sentence summary:

   To pioneer a practice of public autonomy that interrelates citizens
   and government via mechanisms of transitive voting, recombinant
   text, and the continual exposure of legislative bills and other
   draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses.

You give good advice, Mark. Thanks to you, I feel it's stronger now.
I'll have a second look at my clumsy prose in the morning. The latest
draft is here: http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Knight

Mike


Mark Frischmuth said:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> Good luck with the project.  I'd challenge you to be more clear in your
> language and to focus on the desired outcomes to be achieved.  From reading
> the proposal, it's unclear to me exactly how this project would improve the
> way government and citizens interact, and what is meant by "public
> autonomy".  I think that for this to be successful those items should jump
> off the page to the average reader.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark